Middle School Tech

I know… I am a computer geek, have been one for years… way back (like until 1998) I was a died in the wool Mac user. The thought of Windows repelled me… I was one, however, who took the “it-doesn’t-matter what-kind-of-computer-kids-use” argument in the PC - Mac debates of the late 1990’s.

All that changed (sort of) this afternoon when the 4 Macs arrived in our school. I am not sure the almost $5000 for 4 computers is really responsible (we used grant money to buy the new machines), but the look and feel is great. Daniel Pink writes and speaks of how design is important in the modern world… I have a great demonstration of that fact in my classroom now… look at and touch the $500 PC’s, then the $1250 Mac’s… I am sure anyone will see how design matters. And I had students almost late for the bus because they wanted to see the new toys.

Really, really cool.

A few folks read my previous post about my upcoming presentations and asked about Zoho.

Zoho is akin to Google Docs and a few less well-known systems whereby users can create documents using the web. Think of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, all available for free, on the web. Files are stored on the web site, so as long as you have access to the web (and can remember your user name and password) you can access your programs and you r files. IT folks like this system because updates are all taken care of on the server… no more installations, upgrades, licenses!

I like using Zoho for presentations because I can share the file (which makes it public) so others can see it. Zoho and Google Docs also allows a user to add other users to the list of editors of a file. Think of a collection of lab activities that all the science teachers can access and edit; these systems keep a history of revisions also, so you can “roll back” to an earlier version (like if a principal tries to improve your ideas– that is a closed circuit joke to my principal friends in Massachusetts!).

I hea your objections… what about “my stuff?” Users can save files from Zoho or Google Docs to local systems so files can be archived.

What about privacy? Yup. Your are right. I would not store IEP paperwork on these systems.

Google Docs does have a version (at a cost) for schools that allows school and technology leaders to manage accounts, this may b a good option for schools. I know of at least one NELMS Spotlight School that uses some from of Google fee-based services.

http://zoho.com/

http://docs.google.com

Here is a link to the presentation I will be making at the Tri-State Conference in November…

http://show.zoho.com/public/gary_hackscience_net/Middle%20School%20Classroom%202.0

You can also see it embedded in my web site:
http://www.hackscience.net/presentations/index.html

Last April, I mentioned a site called Shelfari (http://www.shelfari.com). At the time, it was relatively new, I have been using it more, and have become convinced it is a valuable resource.

The site is rather simple in concept:

1) Create an account for free (requires an email account… more on that below).

2) Search for books by title, author, ISBN; once you find the book your are searching for, click to add it to your book shelf. Add tags, reviews, and ratings to your books.

3) Interact with others about books on your shelf (the site is a social networking site).

Some ideas on use:

1) A colleague (a fellow fan of brain research– wow, we are weird) was looking for a way to keep all of her notes on her brain books and looking for a way to point others to books… She set up a Shelfari account to keep her brain books.

2) Middle schoolers in our school have accounts (we set them up with phony email accounts using our school’s domain, and we set preferences so that Shelfari does not send these phony addresses messages… also, students can access their accounts only when a teacher inputs the password) and use the site to create book shelves which are embedded in web pages available only in our school. Students write reviews on our site and their peers can search the reviews and leave comments (we use our own system for reviews, students do not post on the Shelfari site).

3) Shelfari book shelves can be embedded in almost any web site… here is an example on one of my web sites… I can see Shelfari being embedded in middle school web sites as an interesting way to share recommended reading lists.

I must say, I am not impressed with my Flip Videos…

For a few projects I have used them with students on Windows XP computers… all the Windows updates installed (maybe that is my problem)… 1.5 GB of RAM… 3 GHZ processors… and…

I had to install a third party video player (VLC media player) to reliably view the videos.

We cannot edit the AVI files in Windows MovieMaker. (Our Macs are back ordered, so I can’t report on that yet.)

About half the time, our Flip Videos are recognized by Windows, the other half the time, the device is unrecognizable… sometimes a reboot fixes this, sometimes not (and we have DeepFreeze installed so software changes are not to blame).

The batteries ran out after a few hours of use, so we replaced the AA with some rechargables from our fleet, and on the first battery change the latch broke on one of our cameras.

I am hoping no one bought these devices on my recommendations… looking forward to reading others’ experiences.